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The First Day
publish date:
2026-06-11 06:29:59
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Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late The Preliminary Hearing
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVEThe Preliminary HearingAlex's POVThe courthouse steps were already crowded with cameras by the time he arrived.He had expected it. David had warned him three times this week and Sandra had warned Aria separately, and still the actual sight of it, the lenses turning toward his car as it pulled up, the shouted questions that blurred into noise before he'd even gotten the door open, landed harder than he'd braced for.Clara was waiting for him just inside the entrance, away from the glass doors, arms crossed tight against herself."I almost didn't come," she said when he reached her."I know.""I keep telling myself I have to. That not showing up would look like I'm hiding from it. But Alex, she's still my mother. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel walking in there."He looked at his sister. Five weeks from her wedding, the dress finished and hanging in her closet, and instead of spending this stretch of her life picking flowers and finalizing seating charts, s
Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late Eight Weeks Out
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUREight Weeks OutAria's POVJerome called a full team meeting on Monday morning, which never happened on a Monday, which meant something.Everyone gathered around the center table. Bisi with her arms crossed. Kwame still holding his coffee. Adaeze sketching even now, pencil moving on a scrap of paper while she listened. Theo leaning against the fabric rail. Lena with her clipboard already out.Jerome stood at the head of the table and looked at all of us."Eight weeks," he said. "I want to say that out loud so it's real for everyone, not just on the schedule." He looked around the room. "Eight weeks until this collection walks in front of press, buyers, and everyone who has ever doubted whether this house could do something bold again."Nobody said anything. The room had gone very still."We are not behind," Jerome continued. "I want to be clear about that. We are exactly where we should be for eight weeks out. But exactly where we should be means there is no room l
Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late The Arrangement
CHAPTER THIRTY THREEThe ArrangementAria's POVSandra read the document three times before she said anything.That told me more than her expression did. Sandra was not a woman who needed to read things three times. She read things once and retained them completely and moved immediately to what needed to be done. Three times meant she was making absolutely certain she understood what she was looking at before she told us what it was.We were in her office. Alex was sitting across from me, jacket still on, coffee untouched on the desk beside him. I had my hands in my lap and I was watching Sandra's face the way you watch a doctor reading a scan.She put the document down."Okay," she said."Okay what?" Alex said."I need you both to understand what this is before I explain what it means." She looked at him first. "Your parents' marriage was not a conventional arrangement. Before the wedding, your mother negotiated a private agreement with your father's family lawyers. Raymond was prese
Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late What Raymond Knows
CHAPTER THIRTY TWOWhat Raymond KnowsAria's POVWe agreed on neutral ground.Sandra's suggestion. She said she wasn't letting either of us walk into a meeting with Raymond Cavendish's lawyer on territory that wasn't ours, so she booked a room at a hotel near the city centre, the kind with meeting rooms off the lobby that existed precisely for conversations nobody wanted to have anywhere more personal.Alex picked me up on the way.He was in the car when I came down, engine running, and when I got in he looked at me the way he'd been looking at me since the night on Nina's floor, like he was checking something he'd been worrying about quietly."You don't have to come," he said. "Whatever Raymond has, I can tell you afterward.""It was addressed to both of us," I said. "I'm coming."He didn't argue. He pulled into traffic and we drove without talking much and it was the comfortable kind of quiet that I was still getting used to, the kind that didn't ask anything of either of us."Whate
Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late Dinner For Two
CHAPTER THIRTY ONEDinner For TwoAria's POVThe order went through on Wednesday. Sandra called to confirm it herself instead of letting David's office relay it, which told me she understood I'd want to hear it from someone on my own side first."It's filed and active," she said. "She cannot come within a hundred metres of you, the studio, or Nina's apartment. If she violates it, it's an automatic arrest, no negotiation, no warning.""And Alex filed it. Not me.""He insisted. Said it was the least he could do." A pause. "For what it's worth, Aria, I've handled a lot of difficult family cases. I don't usually see the husband move this fast or this completely against his own mother. That's not nothing."I sat with that after I hung up.It wasn't nothing.Nina was out that night, dinner with a man she'd been seeing for three weeks and was pretending not to be excited about, which meant the apartment was quiet for the first time in what felt like ages.I was on the floor of the living roo
Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late The Hearing
CHAPTER THIRTYThe HearingAria's POVSandra told me I didn't have to come."It's procedural," she said. "You won't be called. You don't need to be in the room.""I want to be in the room.""Aria.""I sat through three years of being told what was happening to my own life by other people, Sandra. I'm not doing that with this part. I'm going."She didn't argue further.I wore the navy dress I'd bought for the Maison Elara meeting, the one that made me feel like someone who belonged in rooms instead of someone tolerated in them. Nina offered to come. I told her no, this one I needed to do without an audience of my own, and she understood that in the way she understood most things about me without needing it explained.Alex picked me up at eight."You didn't have to drive me.""I know.""I could have taken a car.""I know that too." He pulled out into traffic. "I wanted to."We didn't talk much on the way. There wasn't a version of small talk that fit a morning like this and neither of u
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